Susanna Rosi’s laboratory in the Brain and Spinal Injury Center at UCSF is focused on understanding the mechanisms responsible for the cognitive dysfunctions observed after brain injury. The ultimate goal of her research is to identify new and better diagnostic tools for treatment and prevention. Rosi’s published work demonstrates that neuroinflammation alters the coupling of neuronal activity with the transcription of genes that are implicated in long-term memory and synaptic plasticity. By modulating different aspects of neuroinflammation, Rosi and colleagues showed that it is possible to restore synaptic plasticity, the accuracy of hippocampal network activity and cognition in different animal models of chronic neuroinflammatory conditions. Her most recent work represents a significant breakthrough in the field—in collaboration with UCSF researcher Peter Walter, Rosi discovered that modulating the integrated stress response (ISR) with a drug-like small-molecule inhibitor, ISRIB, completely rescued cognition in injured mice even when administered weeks after traumatic brain injury (TBI), indicating that targeting the ISR emerges as a promising approach for treating chronic cognitive deficits after TBI in humans.